gijinka

Oh dear sweet baby bird Jesus. TheHeavyMetalGM, myself, and two of our other friends embarked on a 14 hour (16 with breaks) journey to Indianapolis from Boston starting at 3:00AM because our fearless GM had a meeting with Pelgrane Press at 6:00pm. I had a grand total of 1 hour of sleep before taking my first 3.5 hour shift, so full of caffeine and a need for speed (not really, I drive like a grandma), we set off on our grand adventure!

DEAR GOD PLEASE DON’T LET US CRASH!

I survived crossing the most hated Hudson river bridge in upstate N.Y. (it’s always under construction so it only has one open lane and looks rickety af), got me some Tim Horton’s coffee and TIMBITS at a rest stop, and promptly went the fuck to sleep after passing the baton at Buffalo. Ohio is terrible, never go there. ONE LANE HIGHWAY. ONE. LANE. Also Kaisch so yeah.

At 5:50 we finally located our hotel and got ourselves checked in. Sean raced off to his meeting while Jess and I finished assembling our cosplays like true veterans in this field. Staff at the Hyatt were all 1) super nice and 2) wearing Star Trek uniforms for the duration of the weekend, which I thought was super cool! We meandered on over to will call to pick up some tickets and handicap wristbands for myself & Jess2, and the customer service folks were probably some of the sweetest people I’ve ever met.

WE SURVIVED!

In line, there were a LOT of dudes leering at me (even in Muggle mode, with next to no makeup, in a knee-length dress, and smaller boobs than usual because I can’t wear a real bra in aforementioned dress because I made it too small like a dink) so I was pretty nervous to go to the con in a skintight bodysuit the next day. I’m used to creepy weeb dudes ogling me in cosplay, but not so much outside of it. Thankfully this was the only incidence of creepy dudes being creepy, which is more than I can say for most anime cons…

We moseyed our way down to Scotty’s Bewhouse, which had two specialty beers & a bunch of events for GenCon; which is super foreign to me. I’m used to the host city pretty much hating convention goers so it was really cool to see one embrace us for once. We all slept like babes and were mostly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the convention!

Thursday I was Padme Amidala from Attack of the Clones and Jess2 was Leia Organa from A New Hope:

THE NUMBER OF DUDES THAT MISTOOK ME FOR LEIA ALL DAMN DAY THO. Fake geek boys are real, fam. I think at the end, there were only 5 people that recognized I was Padme, even when I had Jess2 with me! I also forgot my white tights for my under my pants, but aside from that I’m pretty satisfied with how these turned out. We met up with Mark of Campaign Coins (they’re amazing, please check them out!), and Sean and I went to a 13th Age Adventure Building workshop, which was super fun! I almost died (not really, but came close to passing out a couple times) of heat exhaustion because the convention center decided: “oh 60,000 people crammed in here with 100 degree temps outside? Nah, A/C’s optional” until Friday. I network with some other gaming researchers at a couple of really cool women in gaming panels, and met up with the lovely Anna from Go Make Me a Sandwich (she’s so cool! I’m still freaking out!). Sean & I went to a Star Wars mass battle over Coruscant which you can read about here.

Friday I cosplayed as my Inquisitor Lavellan from Dragon Age Inquisition; I made the coat on Tuesday so there are A LOT of fit issues that I need to fix eventually. It’s not entirely accurate because I have a love/hate relationship with bias tape and I’m not competing with this so IDGAF. Jess2 was kind enough to do my vallaslin and my good friend Emily made my beautiful flower crown! I whipped some buns in my round of Anime Trivia, got to chat with the creators of 13th Age, checked out the Nerd Circus event (really cool!) and played Cards Against Dragon Age that evening.

Saturday Jess & I were our Eeveelutions and won a Hall Cosplay Contest Award (woot!).

We went to the Cosplay Contest, which was REALLY FREAKING WEIRD. Only 1 judge (aside from the people running the contest) was a costumer/crafter, the other two were just special guests of GenCon. There were next to no skits (so it was pretty boring), the categories for entries made no sense (Mary Poppins = pop culture but Disney’s Belle = historical?????), and audience cheers determined who wins best in show out of the first place winners in each category (what the flipppppp). There were, however, cash prizes for winners of each category and first place took home free tickets to GenCon2017, so perhaps I’ll compete next year! However, I just want to take a moment to freak out over the amazing craftsmanship that TWELVE YEAR OLD Kazaradigital put into her Sabine Wren cosplay (she won the children’s category handily, I might add!). She made everything herself with only a little bit of help!!! WHAT EVEN. I can’t wait to see what she puts out next, her craftsmanship is impeccable!

Photo credit to the Indy Star

After the cosplay contest, I got to meet JediManda, and went to the D20 Nerdlesque Extravaganza later that evening. Definitely worth the $20!

Our main objective was hunting the exhibitor’s hall for loot. I picked up a Shaymin (and very nearly grabbed the Mega Ampharos there too, but maybe another day…) Pokedoll and some tumblers from the Pokemon Center. We said our goodbyes to the lovely folks at Pelgrane Press, and returned to our room to change & checkout.

And with that, our first Gen Con experience had come to a close!

It’s over, isn’t it?

So overall, great convention, will definitely be back next year (and next year, GenCon falls on my birthday, so maybe I can convince Sean to fly out there instead of driving…)!